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When Reichen Lehmkuhl wrote
Here's What We'll Say: Growing Up, Coming Out, and the U.S. Air Force (2006), America's armed forces were still in the closet. It was the time of Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) and as many aspects of this autobiography have to deal with life in the U.S. Air Force, some events and names of individuals have had to be changed. Therefore, it is not a memoir in the regular sense. It is not 100 percent accurate and verifiable but, as the author notes in the introduction:
Because some details of this book had to be changed, this story, although based on true events, is not a conventional memoir, as the details chronicled sometimes are not a literal account of events. You as the reader can, however, be confident that you will finish this book with a real sense of the current environment and actual atrocities committed in the United States' service academies and their corresponding services.
Reichen grew up with severe social anxieties. His father left the family when he was six and his eleven year old brother Bobby left a short time later to go live with his father. Reichen was left alone with a mother who had few resources and hardly any support system to fall back upon. His mother was a registered nurse in Cincinnati, Ohio, and young Reichen was often alone in the house, afraid to leave. Ridiculed and bullied at his Catholic school, his mother depressed and anxiety ridden, he would often spend his time alone in his room.
Things began to get better when his mother met Allen, and at age nine they moved to Massachusetts, firstly to an apartment in Attleboro, but eventually to a mobile home in Norton next to a lake. Actually, it was a reservoir, but to nine year old Reichen it was fabulous nonetheless.
One person who had a profound impact on him was his maternal grandmother Betty Turner, who as a young woman during World War II was a member of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and flew some of the most sophisticated aircraft of the day, from B29's to P-51 Mustangs. When Reichen was thirteen, she taught him how to fly and opened up for him opportunities that would eventually take a young awkward, self-conscious, introverted teen from a mobile home park in Norton, Massachusetts, to the sound stages of television networks, and around the world--and eventually winning the fourth season of The Amazing Race.
Roughly the first fifth of the book details his growing up and his first revelations that he was attracted to members of this own sex, and his continual denial of that facet of his being. He had numerous girlfriends during high school, but always broke things off before anything sexual could happen. His first long-time girlfriend was Anne. He felt secure in this relationship because while he lived in Massachusetts, Anne lived in North Carolina, having met during a school trip through Europe as part of his AP French and European History program. It was also during this trip that he met a fellow student who had been accepted to West Point and told Reichen about the application process for all of the service academies, which got him to seriously consider applying to the Air Force Academy, where his love of aviation could be put to use and offer an escape from the trailer park.
In the fall of his senior year of high school, he got a job as a ski instructor at a nearby ski resort and met Ben Silverman, the first person he truly fell in love with.
The book, much like Reichen himself, really comes alive when he receives his acceptance letter from the office of his representative in Congress, Barney Frank, to the Air Force Academy.
Looking back, it is so very ironic that an openly gay congressman provided me with my ticket to the Air Force Academy. But what is downright disgraceful is that an openly gay congressman can decide who has the chance to go to our nation's service academies, but an openly gay person is still not allowed to serve in the military.
Here's What We'll Say provides an excellent overview of life in the service academies and specifically what the U.S. Air Force academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has become since the evangelical Christian Right began its project to make the U.S. military into a force to spread its theological views worldwide. Evangelical groups have explicitly targeted the U.S. military in order to establish a base from which they can convert the U.S. government and the rest of the world. For example, the Officers’ Christian Fellowship, with 15,000 members and active in 80 percent of military bases, has a vision of a “spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform.” The aim of the Military Ministry of the Campus Crusade for Christ, located at all of the military academies and basic training centers, is to “Evangelize and Disciple All Enlisted Members of the US Military” so as to “transform our culture through the U.S. Military” and to “build Christian military leaders and influence our nation for Christ . . . ” Their ultimate vision is “transforming the nations of the world through the militaries of the world.”
As always, the military has been home to a goodly amount of gay members who have served and continue to serve with honor and distinction, but with the implementation of DADT in 1994 the official policy of the Department of Defense
prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants--while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This forced young men and women deeper into the closet just at the time when most come to the realization of their true nature and with it the courage and self-confidence to begin their life with openness and honesty. This is in opposition to the Honor Code: We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does which every cadet lives by, in addition to creating much distress to the men and women who serve. It was into this environment that Reichen finally came to the conclusion that he was gay, found several compatriots, and even managed to have an illicit relationship with a fellow cadet.
By the second half of his junior year, he had come to the conclusion that the gay and lesbian cadets at the academy needed to band together and form a group for their own protection--they were getting close to being found out. One student was sending email through the campus computer network openly discussing gay subjects and threatening to expose the whole group through his inadvertent use of this monitored system.
I had never actually tried to excommunicate someone, but the thought of it was well within my mind as our group of gay cadets and sympathizers continued to develop. Shutting someone out completely would not come without consequences and I knew that. All involved would have to agree to ignore them, and fear of that person would have to be instilled, as a safety mechanism, in all of us. If that person tried to come after us, we would all have to have the exact same response, if questioned separately. Our allied story would be set up, in turn, to take down the person trying to hurt the group. We would have to do anything to keep ourselves safe and undetected.
Reichen was developing his own modified honor code. DADT could more appropriately be labelled Permission to Lie, and any policy that inherently tells someone to lie lacks any integrity and will eventually break a person. The very same policy will also eventually break down the organization that sanctions it. It will not only put a wedge between gay and straight men and women serving side-by-side in the military, but it will also eventually pit gay people themselves against each other. Gay military members become too afraid to come out, even to each other, for support.
When a crisis soon developed shortly after Reichen had come to these conclusions, it was decided that a meeting was needed and policies and procedures put forward to thwart the corrosive affects of DADT. Thus it was that Reichen formed a strong, powerful group to come to a member's aid when accusations were made against them. "Here's what we'll say" became the opening line of each meeting and a bonding commitment so important that each member would engrave it into their service academy class rings.
Here's What We'll Say is an entertaining read and an inspiring story about leadership and courage and one man's journey in finding that courage to become a leader.
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